


The First Lesson

by CloudDreamer



Series: Theater of Tragicomedy [6]
Category: Hiveswap, Homestuck
Genre: Censorship, F/F, Minor Violence, POV Second Person, Revolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 10:06:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19293520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudDreamer/pseuds/CloudDreamer
Summary: "The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man." - Huey NewtonTyzias has learned many things over the years, but she always comes back to this.





	The First Lesson

What does it mean to be a revolutionary on a world so beaten down and broken? What does it mean to want to fight a war that's already been lost by people stronger, older, more competent than you? Is it even worth it to try? 

You see a corpse with bronze green dripping from the hole in its chest. You didn't know the troll, don't recognize their body. That's how it usually is, a fact you can't help but be grateful for. Just because most everyone you know and care about would be horrified if they understood the extent of your treason doesn't mean you don't care about them. 

And it is treason. 

Your entire existence is against the law that you've sworn to uphold. This fact keeps you up at day. It keeps you working, always searching for another level of truth, because you're already damned. You might as well know as much as possible. 

Your partner sees your reaction to the corpse and processes it, probably cataloguing it in part of her ongoing folder of reasons why you are not to be trusted. She's right, of course, but she'd be shocked to discover the full extent of your crimes. To be fair, you're pretty sure you don't really understand the extent of them either, just that you've long since past the point of no return. 

This could be red blood, bright and candy against rough gray skin. 

It could be lime, brilliant green like the light of the moon up in the sky. 

You close your eyes for a moment, and it's a moment too long. She prompts you to do something, and you do, scribbling down your observations. You drag your words out with a stutter you know drives her crazy. She thinks you don't know how she feels, but she's as open as a book about that sort of thing. She's actually pretty open about most things. 

You're not, even with the people you love the most. 

The person you love the most. 

You linger on thoughts of Stelsa and kisses you've shared. You're everything to her and she's everything to you. If you had to chose any one troll on this forsaken hellworld to be by your side if it all ended in fire and fury, it'd be her in a heartbeat. It's only with her that you feel free from your burdens, both the ones you've taken on out of your own will -- if there's such a thing-- and the ones you were given when you were born with. But... 

She doesn't know. 

Oh, she suspects. She's as clever as she is pretty, and she's very pretty. But thinking you might have dangerous rebel sympathies is distinct from knowing you've combed through almost every piece of official history the empire has to offer in search of inconsistencies, bartered for illicit scraps of data in dark alleyways with a mysterious olive blooded girl, and tracked down ancient texts hidden in the cracks of society. Between all your sources and a fair bit of guessing, you know enough to get almost everyone you've ever met culled. 

You check over your shoulder for drones every other second, and you almost always spot one, hovering in the background. Stelsa asks why you look for them, and you don't have an answer. Even if she knew everything about you, everything you've stolen, found, traded for...

What could you do? 

You learn, and you write, always in subtext and three different layers of code. You argue in ways that border on suspicious, border on controversy, border on treason, but you never say enough. You are never strong enough to fight, not in any way that really matters, and you are never smart enough to bring someone to your side, not fully. Not enough to actually matter. 

You want to scream. 

You cannot. 

You _cannot._

The more you learn, the worse your fate grows, but you can't do anything so you keep learning. You hide yourself behind layers of crypto, behind firewalls, behind passwords, behind promises, behind locks without keys, behind anything you can find, and it is never enough. 

You are not powerless, but you are not powerful. When Stelsa worries for you, you wonder if she is right. You can't unlearn what you know, but you can refuse to act on it. Books can be burnt and coding deleted. Your voice can be silenced, and those snarky anti-empire undertones in your writing can vanish as easily as they came. It's not like you don't value your own safety and comfort. 

But.

But then you think about the corpses of low bloods hidden in the bushes or just abandoned in the middle of the road because their killer knew they didn't have to fear consequences. 

 

But then you think of innocent lime bloods, with no control over their birth, choking to death on their own internal organs as they heard the sound of a beast not meant to exist on this planet. 

But then you think about the Sufferer and of a time when his bright red blood was exposed to the world. 

His rage still burns, hot and passionate. You do not scream your indignation, but you do not abandon it. Your wrath smolders inside you, as hot as the irons. Your knowledge dooms you and everything you love in this cursed word, but without it, you would be complacent in this order. Trolls bleed and die for this cause as you turn your fears over in your mind, again and again. 

Your knowledge is not enough by any measure, but it's somewhere to start.

**Author's Note:**

> A poorly disguised meditation on my own thoughts about action, knowledge, and revolution.


End file.
